Beards and Kids [VIDEO]

BY Doug Geiger

Keeping Your Beard Safe From Your Kids

Do you prefer to read about how to keep your beard safe from your kids? No problem. Have a look at the transcript of the video below.

"Kids have terrible hand-eye coordination. They have these hands and they don’t really know how to use them. They sit in your lap and some how or other they find your beard and tug on it. They have no sense of personal space. They just don’t know what it’s like to have this hair you’ve been growing for years and they grab hold of it and rip it out of your face.

They are God’s crude instruments with no fine motor skills for several years. Way beyond what you’d think and they still literally have two more years until they have fine motor skills. You try not to take it personally but you really do.

The two techniques of mitigating beard pulling are tucking and braiding. I just kind of grab it [my beard] like this, get a handful of my beard and tuck it like this. Now kids are amazing- it’s like a Discovery Channel sort of thing where they can still find that one lone hair and yank it.

You can take your beard and braid it. I didn’t learn how to braid hair until I had a beard. I fan it out and then take my fingers to make it three even parts. Then you just braid it and that way you don’t have a single lone hair. There’s strength in numbers. As much as I joke about it, it really isn’t that bad.

There’s a few things at a pre-verbal level that I associate with my dad. I remember the smell of coffee, not just in the room but on his breath when he would talk to me. I remember too, the sound of his keys. I literally could his keys from across the room.

I suspect that much like the smell and the sound I associate with my dad, I think that probably Teddy, Henry, and Ellis will associate me with certain things. I think probably one of them will be my beard - the feeling of my beard as they yank it from my skin. The sound of my voice as I say “Don’t yank my beard from my skin!” They’ll associate me with some of those early memories with me and my beard.

“And that’s called nostalgia.”

THIS ARTICLE IS PART OF CAN YOU HANDLEBAR’S ONGOING EDUCATIONAL AND LIFESTYLE BLOG, READ MORE AT THEBEARDMENTOR.COM